Sugar Cane Refining And Processing Company: A Comprehensive Case In Measuring A Firms Cost Of Capital

The Sugar Cane Refining and Processing Company is a comprehensive case illustrating how a firms financial manager should calculate the firms cost of capital. Senior level undergraduate and graduate corporate financial management courses cover advanced topics in cost of capital and applying the rate in capital budgeting. To cover this relevant topic in a single case, the invented or armchair approach is used. This case is completely contrived but is very educationally effective

Adsorption of p-cresol on Granular Activated Carbon

Swine farming emit several odorous volatile organic compounds, one of which is p-cresol. Considering the layout of a swine barn, adsorption is one of the most suitable technologies for mitigating organic pollutants. In this study, commercial granular activated carbon (GAC) was tested as an adsorbent for removing p-cresol from aqueous solution. The objectives were to: 1) determine the combined effect of temperature, pH, and adsorbent dose on adsorption, (2) investigate the effect of volatile fatty acids and aldehydes on adsorption of p-cresol, (3) determine adsorption kinetics and isotherms, (4) study the effect of solvent on adsorption, (5) propose a possible mechanism of adsorption, and (6) discuss practical implications and design calculations for estimating adsorption of p-cresol on activated carbon. Batch experiments with GAC were performed to assess the combined effects of temperature (15-35 °C), pH (6-8), and adsorbent dose (10-30 g L-1) on adsorption of p-cresol. The results indicated that adsorption capacity of p-cresol decreased with increasing adsorbent dose, whereas the effects of pH and temperature were not significant. Optimum adsorption capacity of 12.02 mg g-1 was observed at temperature of 25 °C, pH of 7, and adsorbent dose of 0.32g. It was also found that presence of isovaleric acid and formaldehyde enhanced adsorption of p-cresol. Kinetic analyses indicated that p-cresol adsorbed mainly via chemisorption and adsorption was limited mainly via intra-particle diffusion. The role of solvent was not significant suggesting that water did not compete with p-cresol. Furthermore, surface oxygen somewhat inhibited adsorption of p-cresol perhaps due to enhancement of hydrophilicity. It is proposed that adsorption occurred mainly via electron-transfer between p-cresol and activated carbon. Sample design calculations are also presented to aid the swine producers to estimate the carbon dosage.

How Much Did The Gulf Oil Spill Actually Cost British Petroleum Shareholders?

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon Drilling Platform, a British Petroleum (BP) licensed rig, exploded. Two days later the huge rig sank to thebottom of the Gulf of Mexico triggering the United States worst offshore oilspill. By April 26, investors and themarket began realizing that the costs associated with this catastrophic eventto BP could be significant and BP shares fell by over two percent. The next day BP reported its annual earningswhich showed a huge rise in profits, due in part to much higher oil prices forthe previous year and BPs common stock price increased. However, on May 6, 2010, analysts warned that the Gulf ofMexico oil spill disaster would likely cost BP over $23 billion dollars (15bn)and its shares can be expected to lag behind those of its competitors by 5% forthe lasting future. At the same time,Tony Hayward insisted the company would "bounce back" from thesetback though he could not give a timescale for when the flow of oil would behalted. This study investigated BPsstock returns using two models to determine if their stocks experiencedabnormal returns for the period April 20, 2010 through April 5, 2011. Results show that the most significant impact of the oilspill to the stock price was over the first 34 days of the event period. This study estimates a significant negativeimpact of 38% to 41% in share value for BP during this event period

A Better Way To Measure The Cost Of Equity Capital For Small Closely Held Firms

A company’s cost of capital is the average rate it pays for the use of its capital funds. Estimating the cost of equity capital for a publicly traded firm is much simpler than estimating the same for a small privately held firm. For privately owned firms there is the lack of market based financial information. In business damage cases, valuation of the firm is often a prime interest. A necessary variable in the valuation process is the estimate of the firm’s cost of capital. Part of the cost of capital is the equity holders or owners required rate of return. The purpose of this paper is to explore the theoretical structure that underlies the valuation process for business damage cases that involve privately owned businesses. Specifically, cost of equity capital estimate methods which appear in the current literature are examined, and a theoretically correct and simple method to measure cost of equity capital for closely held companies is offered

Circular economic service system design for community based flood resilience: Integrating systems design and behavioral science to address a public sector challenge from within

The role of a designer is gradually being believed to be that of a social scientist and a leader who designs or facilitates innovation of newer ecosystems of products, services and systems; developing social capital along with resource effectiveness and economical benefits. The social and environmental imperatives have compelled designers to look beyond satisfying human desires, from merely creating problem-solving products towards focussing equally or more on generating overall well-being in the society — both individual and societal, and thus engender meaningful interactions of users with their surrounding environment through corresponding product-service-systems. As Professor MP Ranjan, a notable design educator blogs, “…(design offerings) are synthesized and developed in such a way that they vibe with the context and add value to the social, geographic and historical situation that is being addressed.” In current times, emerging world issues like climatic aberration, exponential increase in population, heavy product consumption, it’s post-usage waste generation and poor resource management have been gradually leading to chronic problems of sustainability, such that the vision of a plausible tomorrow questions the mere existence of humans and the symbiotic relationships it share with its surroundings. With multiple causes and its complex interdependencies, these problems are deeply entwined within our lifestyle behaviours, aspirations, desires, social beliefs, and our response to the evolving environment. Shifting from the linear process of resource usage, consumption and disposal, circular economy believes in the core principle of re-circling material resource and preserve existing stock for a sustainable and resource abundant tomorrow. Enabling resource effective ecosystems today by ensuring collaborative usage, shift to renewable sources of energy and improved manufacturing processes and logistic cycles, Design-for-Circular-Economy (DfCE) is one of the first stepping stones towards creating future ecosystems of well-being living. As a part of an academic applied design research project, this paper explores design of a circular economic service-system to facilitate community based resilience and enable a well-being ecosystem among the annually flood prone communities of the Brahmaputra Valley in the state of Assam, India. Threatening a sustainable lifestyle and scope for socio-economic development, the villages in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam, India, experience massive floods annually, leading to basic need deprivation, impoverishment, weakness and extreme social, physiological and cognitive vulnerability. Primary ethnography and design research revealed that being exposed to an annual vulnerability to basic survival needs, accompanied by the absence of adequate and permanent flood resilience systems, these communities have been completely dependent on external aid for relief and rehabilitation. This dependency, however, has reduced the overall desire and capacity for self-reliance and the community’s resilience to such situations of emergency. Approaching through holistic design thinking and system oriented design intervention, this project attempts to collaboratively design a service system to facilitate an ecosystem of self-reliance, effective community interactions, resource effectiveness and participatory local innovations for flood-resilient village development. Understanding and mapping the process of systemic circular design intervention In order to understand and decipher the methodology and process of thinking and designing holistically, several social design methodologies, community well-being design frameworks, philosophies and narratives were studied to create a design artefact, 10-Q-2-d-i. The tool enabled to evaluate a generated design concept or idea from multi-stakeholder design development perspectives. Analysing various case studies of circular economic design interventions, a set of circular economic design trends have also been compiled and segregated as idea trigger cards — ‘Design Intervention Cards for Design-for-Circular-Economy (DfCE)’ to engage into participatory design ideations. These cards, as initial design directions, focussed on the design objective of enabling circular economy in a given context and aid designers and design students to channelize concepts generation process. Exploring circular economic design opportunities for cultivating well-being among the flood prone communities of Assam, India As primary research and end-user design inquiry, ethnographic research was carried out in three flood-prone areas of Assam to understand the current lifestyle scenarios, the severity of experienced problems, perceptions of well-being and prevalent behavioural biases of the primary stakeholders. Design dimensions for well-being and social sustainability ecosystem generation were mapped to the principles of circular economy in order to generate a system design approach framework. This framework was used to identify the leverage points for design intervention in the contextual system. Subsequently, a trans-disciplinary co-creation workshop was curated for idea generation, concept segregation and collaborative design development. Contributing to flood-resilient village development: developing a collaborative grain storage and service system through social entrepreneurship Using the system design framework, a social entrepreneurial model was conceptualized for the flood prone communities of Assam to facilitate and enhance self-reliance of food availability. Collaborative Grain Storage and Service (CGSS) System enables a user family to effective plan their farm-produce consumption patterns, and have on-demand access of food grains during any emergency scenarios like floods. The different service touchpoint implementation strategy was further developed and validated with the users. Effective implementation of circular economic behaviour today in terms of collaborative or shared services that generate higher numbers of livelihood opportunities, effective user experiences, and aids communities to adapt renewable energy sources that reflect visibly on their household expenditures will make communities and villages in India evolve to a more resource effective system. Within the contextual constrains, service system design can be approached through stakeholder participation and systemic design methodologies. The paper/presentation highlights how system oriented design can work on complex social problems by creating product-service-systems that enables the stakeholders in their capability-building, addresses local sustainability issues and creates a global implication through its replicability

Effect of spinal mobilization with leg movement as an adjunct to neural mobilization and conventional therapy in patients with lumbar radiculopathy: Randomized controlled trial

Background: In lumbar radiculopathy there is compression or inflammation of a spinal nerve and it may be accompanied by numbness and tingling, muscle weakness or loss of spinal reflexes in one or both lower limbs. Conventional physiotherapy which includes back extension exercises has varying degree of success in pain and functional outcome in lumbar radiculopathy. Mulligan's spinal mobilization with limb movement (SMWLM) and Shacklock's neural tissue mobilization are few of the techniques employed in the management of lumbar radiculopathy. The purpose of the study was to find out whether spinal mobilization with leg movement as an adjunct to neural mobilization and conventional therapy could bring better outcome in patients when compared to conventional therapy or neural mobilization and conventional therapy. Methods: 90 patients were selected randomly with lumbar radiculopathy. Duration of the study was for six weeks. The study included 3 groups, control group received back extension exercises and hot pack, experimental group 1 received neural mobilisation and conventional physiotherapy and experimental group 2 received SMWLM along with neural mobilisation and conventional physiotherapy. The outcomes included NPRS, SLR using goniometry and MOLBPQ which were assessed at day 1 and 2, 4, 6 week. ANOVA was done for inter group analysis and paired t-test was done for intra group analysis. Results: All the groups showed significant difference (P -0.000 < 0.05) at 2, 4, 6 weeks of NPRS, MOLBPQ and SLR. The mean difference and paired t-test values of experimental group 2 was more when compared to experimental group 1 and control group at the end of 6 weeks. Conclusion: All the three groups showed improvement in pain, functional disability and straight leg raise (SLR). SMWLM as an adjunct to neural mobilization and conventional therapy showed significantly better outcomes in pain, functional disability and SLR when compared to conventional therapy or neural mobilization and conventional therapy

Active Learning Augmented Folded Gaussian Model for Anomaly Detection in Smart Transportation

Smart transportation networks have become instrumental in smart city applications with the potential to enhance road safety, improve the traffic management system and driving experience. A Traffic Message Channel (TMC) is an IoT device that records the data collected from the vehicles and forwards it to the Roadside Units (RSUs). This data is further processed and shared with the vehicles to inquire the fastest route and incidents that can cause significant delays. The failure of the TMC sensors can have adverse effects on the transportation network. In this paper, we propose a Gaussian distribution-based trust scoring model to identify anomalous TMC devices. Then we propose a semi-supervised active learning approach that reduces the manual labeling cost to determine the threshold to classify the honest and malicious devices. Extensive simulation results using real-world vehicular data from Nashville are provided to verify the accuracy of the proposed method

Renal Cell Carcinoma with IVC Thrombus Extending up to Right Atrium and Triple Vessel Coronary Artery Disease - One-stage uro-cardiac Procedure: A case Report

Introduction: The aim of this report is to prove the possibility of simultaneous difficult cardiac and urologic operation. Important point to make in our report concerns the fact that the oncologic treatment was not delayed despite severe heart disease. There is also an advantage in avoiding second operation and hence anesthesiaCase Presentation: A 72 year old male presented to us with right renal mass lesion with tumour thrombus extending up to right atrium. He had undergone Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty 5 years ago and had two coronary stents in situ. Coronary angiography revealed triple vessel coronary re obstruction. After proper planning he underwent right radical nephrectomy with tumour thombectomy along with Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting in the same sitting.Conclusion: One-stage cardiac and uro-oncologic operation can be a safe and beneficial procedure, if performed in selected patients